It owes its transformation into the desirable address that it has represented for nearly a century to King Alexander Karađorđević when he decided to build a new family residence for himself on the ridge of the hill. He chose a spot from where there were long views on all sides, particularly to the south over the wooded Topčider valley. He began to buy up land and between 1924 and 1929 built the Royal Palace (Kraljevski dvor) for himself in the kind of national Byzantine style found in some of the architecture in the centre of Belgrade. The building has a quiet elegance suited to its function as a family home, not an institution of state. Later, as part of the same complex, a new palace was completed in 1936, the White Palace (Beli dvor) in a neoclassical style. Tito used the White Palace as a place for holding state functions and receptions after the Second World War, and since the end of Milošević’s regime the complex has been returned to the Karađorđević family for their use.
King Alexander set a trend with his palace development, which was immediately followed by Belgrade’s wealthier families who built luxury villas for themselves in Dedinje, pushing the city’s boundaries up the hill from Knez Miloš Street. The parkland to the side was planned in the 1930s with pathways for walking and riding and given the name Hyde Park (Hajd park).
Dedinje rapidly became more than just a district of Belgrade. It became a social goal, as a villa in this part of town was taken as a sign of arrival in Belgrade’s high society and represented success, money, sophistication and elegant living. It attracted the attention of foreign representatives who saw the value of having their embassy, or more often an ambassador’s residence, in Dedinje with the more functional embassy building in town.
When the communists arrived in 1944 they took it upon themselves to take over control of Belgrade in all ways, including the symbolic significance of the Dedinje villas. Their goal was not just to assume the outward appearance of having taken power, but to take over the prestige and position of the pre-war elite. To this end they requisitioned the houses in Dedinje, moving out the previous owners and installing themselves and their families. Property was handed out to loyal followers of the Communist Party like a medieval king would give castles and lands to his feudal barons.
The same mentality dominated among the new elite of the 1990s. They were not interested in emulating the political coup that the communists strove to achieve, but wanted to show the rest of their world that they had truly arrived. Old-style leaders of criminal gangs became new-style businessmen, hiding their origins behind a Dedinje villa. Yet their taste for kitsch styles in dress, music and finally architecture led them to treat their prestige addresses in a different way. They would enlarge the property, or even pull down the original house and replace it with some hugely vulgar monstrosity, ruining the unassuming elegance for which the district was famous. Their trademark has acquired the term “turbo” architecture, coined from the more widely known turbofolk, a fast and furious version of popular music from the 1990s produced by adding disco rhythms to the slower oriental melodies of traditional folk songs.
The basic orientation of “turbo” forms, according to Slobodan Bogunović in his encyclopaedia of Belgrade architecture, is founded on a “reinterpretation and politicization of folklore, a nationalist mania for mythmaking based on incorrect readings of national history”. He characterizes the stylistic content of its architectural design as follows:
The absence of any feeling of measure, an intoxication with physical size, a visible tendency towards a sense of the theatrical overburdened by motifs and details; a somewhat mellow, indulgent and shallow understanding of architectural tradition, alongside a shameless flirting with dreams of a fairytale, ideal home, bring these objects close to the nature of kitsch production and kitsch perception.
These “turbo” blunders mix a layman’s vision of a hi-tech future with a confused sense of the purpose of architecture. They appear to some as a Postmodernist expression in building materials. Yet such a view overlooks the social, economic and political chaos that shaped Belgrade in the 1990s, and the desperate situation of most of its inhabitants as a result of the collapse of Yugoslavia. The appearance of these weird buildings is a sign of those times of crisis, just as the Baroque and classical monumentalism of many of the buildings in the centre is a sign of the city’s early growth and sense of self-confidence.
HOUSE OF FLOWERS
A little way along Knez Alexander Karađorđević Boulevard, set back from the main road behind a broad swathe of park, stands what used to be the Museum of 25 May. The date is taken from Yugoslavia’s Day of Youth (Dan mladosti), which was also Tito’s birthday. It used to exhibit the official presents that the president received on his state visits to other countries, and items sent to him from various organizations and individuals from within Yugoslavia. It was a shrine to the popularity of Tito, which with the fall of communism became out of place, and the museum no longer exists. The space is used for temporary exhibitions, and the area in front for small musical or theatre performances. Just inside the front door, however, two of Tito’s official cars remain on display. One of them, a Rolls Royce, was slightly damaged during the 1999 bombing campaign. It was kept in a garage at the late president’s villa which became a target when it was rumoured that Milošević was living there.
Another museum used to be close by but is now considered irrelevant in the new times. The Museum of 4 July was dedicated to the Partisan uprising in 1941, as it was in this house, formerly belonging to Vladislav S. Ribnikar, that the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party met to organize resistance to the German occupation.
Behind the ex-Museum of 25 May is a small mausoleum, the House of Flowers (Kuća cveća), where Tito’s coffin was laid to rest in 1980. His tomb is made of plain white marble with his name and years of his birth and death in gold letters. The whole building is a modest homage to the man who led the country from the end of the Second World War to 1980. By the side of the House of Flowers is a small museum of artefacts from his life, mainly gifts given on state occasions. Behind the wall lies his former residence, a villa constructed as the family home of Aleksandar Acović in 1934. When Tito arrived in Belgrade at the end of 1944 he lived briefly in the White Palace before moving to 15 Užice Street. The site is now closed to visitors, but the damage caused in 1999 is obvious from the street.
TOPČIDER AND SURROUNDINGS
Vojvoda Putnik Boulevard continues to climb the hill beside Hyde Park to meet the Topčider Star, or Topčiderska zvezda, a roundabout where seven roads converge. From here the boulevard drops down the other side of the hill with a pleasantly wooded area on the left through which paths cut down to the bottom avoiding the main road. On the other side of the road the slope forms a residential area known as Senjak; its name comes from the Serbian word seno, meaning hay. Kalemegdan used to provide storage space for hay until there was a serious fire in 1857 that caused a great deal of damage and presented a serious danger to the fortress and the buildings inside. It was decided, thereafter, for reasons of prudence, that such easily combustible material should not be kept so close to the centre of Belgrade. The collection and storage point for hay was then moved out of town to here, hence Senjak.
This innovation was followed toward the close of the nineteenth century by the building of new industries near the square marking the end of Knez Miloš Street. People looking for work began to migrate to this district and, since it was outside the city boundary and not subject to any planning regulations, built rough dwellings on the slope of Senjak. Not much attention was given to these hastily constructed shacks, thrown up with no regard for any kind of urban plan, until the development of Dedinje as a residential quarter was under way in the 1920s and 1930s. Although it was less prestigious than Dedinje, Senjak was very close and it rose in popularity among Belgrade’s middle classes who replaced the slums with family villas. The old racecourse, the Belgrade Hippodrome, was relocated to the bottom of the Senjak slope from its original site near the Đeram Market on King Alexander
Boulevard at the beginning of the twentieth century and, later, the state mint was built close by.
The area known as Košutnjak begins just to the south of Senjak. It is thickly wooded parkland with mixed deciduous and evergreen trees spreading up the hill away from the valley floor of Topčider. In the nineteenth century it was known as a hunting ground, košuta being the Serbian word for a hind or a doe. It covers a substantial area and has retained a rather wild appearance. People come here to have a picnic or go walking. Residential areas have since sprung up around Košutnjak, too, so it is no longer on the very periphery of Belgrade, yet building within the park area is controlled to keep it a green oasis. The air is much clearer than closer in to the city where there is a concentration of exhaust fumes and noise. Knez Mihailo Obrenović was assassinated in Košutnjak on 29 May 1868. The spot is commemorated with a simple monument, which is inappropriately small and hidden away, really deserving a more prominent and visible place. A railway line marks the boundary between Košutnjak and the Topčider valley.
Topčider valley nestles in the middle of the area bordered by Dedinje, Senjak and Košutnjak, down the hill from the Topčider Star. The area is known for its very pleasant microclimate, enjoyed by the rulers of Belgrade, whether Ottoman or Austrian, who escaped business in town and came here for picnics, hunting or country parties. In times of war it was a strategic point for armies attacking the city where they could put up camp in relative safety, separated by the hill from the defenders’ guns. The valley also gave control of major approaches to Belgrade from the south. The Turks made use of the area when taking the city in 1521, and later Karađorđe during the First Serbian Uprising.
Miloš Obrenović decided to build a small palace complex in the bottom of the valley for himself after receiving the hatti-sherif of 1830. The konak, or residence, intended for use by the church next door, was the first building to go up in 1830–32, constructed in a traditional Balkan style. The church, dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul, was built over the next two years and designed according to more western taste with a tall bell tower like the Cathedral church in Belgrade, but on a much smaller scale. The prince’s own residence, Konak kneza Miloša, was sited close by and was also constructed between 1832 and 1834 in a typical Balkan style of architecture. These buildings still stand today, except that Miloš’s konak now houses a museum with exhibitions about the Serbian uprisings against the Turks.
After his exile abroad, Miloš took up residence here again in 1859, and after his death the Obrenović rulers continued to use it as a summer house. Other workshops, a military store and a garrison were built, but most of the area was developed as a park. Miloš did not want a defensive fortification on this spot and he modelled his residence on the kind of environment that the ruling families in Western Europe were then making for themselves. One French visitor, quoted by Bogunović, remarked that the residence at Topčider was “the Versailles of the Serbian Princes”.
REINTERPRETING THE PAST
Literature in the 1980s became obsessed with looking at the past in new ways. The taboos of Tito’s time gradually gave way to a much bolder approach to recent history. Even so, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was not prepared to allow creative artists simply to express any views or images without a struggle. The Serbian poet Gojko Đogo found himself in court for his collection titled Woolly Times (Vunena vremena, 1982) in which he provided very unflattering sketches of the late president himself. He spent a period in prison before an early release on conditional discharge after public protests at his treatment.
The Croatian League of Communists published a report in 1984, The White Book (Bijela knjiga), criticizing contemporary artists who allowed themselves too much liberty. The 237–page document detailed instances in which it was felt that novels, plays, films, aphorisms and literary criticism were spreading messages hostile to the regime. By far the greatest amount of offending material was taken from Serbia with considerably less from Slovenia and Croatia. The report stated that some criticism in recent times had gone beyond the bounds of acceptability and had attacked “the very direction of Yugoslav social development and the basis of the economic and political syste”. The themes to which the party hierarchy objected in particular were stories about the prison island Goli Otok, narratives rewriting the story of the Partisan struggle and stories whose bleak pictures of the contemporary world indicated that not all was well with socialism in Yugoslavia. Authors were publishing work that questioned assumptions about the past and the present—“open attempts to devalue the revolution and its achievements in the name of demystification”.
The White Book was correct in its basic assumption that writers in 1980s Serbia were re-assessing the story of communism in Yugoslavia. This is not to say that all were dissidents or intent on pulling the regime down; for many it was an attempt to open a debate on the nature and direction of contemporary society. This kind of Serbian writing, with its concentration of talent in Belgrade, was epitomized by one member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Predrag Palavestra, as “critical literature”. Writers were interested in the process that brought the communists to power, the consequences of their policies and the gap between official versions of history and what was preserved in folk memory from those times.
The novelist Slobodan Selenić took this topic as the theme for his address to a conference held in Belgrade in June 1990. Participants at the conference from the Serbian and Swedish Academies were examining the responsibility of science and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society. Selenić spoke about mainstream tendencies in the modern Serbian novel and compared them to the fate of historiography as an academic discipline. He described how history under the communists in Yugoslavia ossified, how it “ceased being the branch of knowledge that records and explains past events”. Instead, it became a series of convenient slogans and assumptions about what happened. History, the academic subject entrusted with the responsibility of investigating what has made us what we are today, was emasculated. For decades after the end of the Second World War the primary task of the historian had been to reinforce the place and prestige of the communist movement in Yugoslavia. Hence, Selenić insisted that only the imaginative scope of literature was free to take a fresh look at Serbian history. Novelists had the task to exhume and disturb the ghosts of the past, to offer alternative visions of what happened, to take on the responsibility of confronting accepted wisdoms. For some Belgrade novelists, the story of their city during the war and its subsequent liberation was one of those topics that had not received the treatment it deserved.
The Partisan novel was typically set in the mountains and among the small villages of provincial Yugoslavia while German and Italian forces were in possession of most major towns and communication routes. Consequently, there were very few stories about the war set in Belgrade. One exception was the novel The Poem (Pesma, 1952) by Oskar Davičo (1909–89)—except that the plot offers a standard view of Belgrade as a corrosive and corrupting environment. Then Aleksandar Đorđević (1924–2005) directed the 1974 film The Written-off (Otpisani) about a group of young communists in Belgrade fighting the Germans and bringing the guerrilla war into town, followed by a sequel two years later, Return of the Written-off. Both films were transferred to the small screen and became very popular television series.
The story of war-time Belgrade, however, received a much more vigorous re-interpretation in two novels, translated into English: Slobodan Selenić’s Fathers and Forefathers (Očevi i oci, 1985) and Svetlana Velmar-Janković’s Dungeon (Lagum, 1990).
The story of Fathers and Forefathers is told by two characters, the married couple Stevan and Elizabeth Medaković. Stevan meets the English girl Elizabeth in Bristol when he goes to study at the university there, taking her back to Belgrade as his wife in 1925. The novel covers their life together from when they meet to some forty years later when they are both alone in their rooms on the second floor of 52 Knez Miloš Street.
The n
ovel dramatizes a series of clashes of different cultures as Serbs and English, parents and children, communists and non-communists, traditional and modern worlds, rub up against one another, repelling and attracting. Elizabeth is particularly struck by the contrasts she experiences in Belgrade. One side is characterized by poverty, backwardness and cruelty. On arriving at the Sava quay by boat at the end of their long journey from England in 1925, she is frightened by the sudden appearance of men in rags racing through the mud to fight over their bags and earn a tip. She rails against the way in which the draymen whip their horses on steep streets and slippery cobbles. This is the barbaric side of Belgrade, which she sums up as “the Orient”. The other side of her life is epitomized by Stevan, who lectures at the Faculty of Law, and his friends, all of whom are highly educated and cultured people. They are knowledgeable about world affairs and some are amateur chamber musicians who meet regularly to play for their own enjoyment. This is the civilized, European Belgrade.
Selenić’s novel allows ample opportunity for reflection on Belgrade society and Serbian culture. At the time of its publication, however, readers were more alert to its picture of life in the city when the communists arrive in 1944. For Stevan and Elizabeth, the Partisans are hardly liberators, and Stevan recalls—in contradiction to the regime’s propaganda—how the citizens of Belgrade knew very little about the resistance movement during the occupation since its distant operations were of little relevance to the daily grind of surviving the war in the city.
Mihajlo, Elizabeth’s and Stevan’s son, is intensely drawn to the young comrades from the hills and villages of Bosnia and Serbia with whom he comes into contact. He invites them into the family home which they use to paint banners and posters to take on demonstrations in support of Tito. As they prepare their materials they spill paint and carelessly put their muddy boots on furniture. Stevan describes how “I clenched my teeth, kept my silence and watched how the Huns and Visigoths devastated my home from one day to the next.” They have, he says, the “spontaneity of jungle creatures” unconscious of what they are doing “because they knew no order”. Selenić also draws into his fictional world the names of the party hierarchy whom Stevan meets and who force him to work for them because they want to make use of his legal expertise. He calls that period “those ugly and perilous times”.
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